For the last event of the year at IdiomArt, Sarah HB, the director of the Cuenca Intercultural Community Center (AKA IdiomArt), set up a tour to Gualaceo, just outside of Cuenca, to see where one of the 50 families in the area makes fireworks for various festivities around Ecuador. MIPA – Museo Interactivo de Pirotecnia Artesanal en Gualaceo has a museum showing the history of fireworks, demonstrates the process how various fireworks are still made by hand, then gives members of the private tour a chance to feel how tedious the process is. The chemicals and colors created have been passed on for generations. Miguel demonstrated how to fireproof the string used in many of the displays(top left), a mural of his father, who was also in the pyrotechnics business (top right). To heat up air inside the globos so they can float, pieces of fabric are dipped in wax, then lit beneath the globo (bottom left, hot air balloons made with silk paper).

After the tour of the museum, we had a chance to interact and blow things up. Our group sent up two globos (hot air balloons with good luck messages — seen in the video below), set off rockets, volunteered to be the dancing cows (upper right) and dogs (lower left), with fireworks lit on their backs. Evelyn (top left) can be seen carrying a bamboo pole with pinwheel fireworks. Sometimes, the group might see a castile in action. For sure, you can see castlles (castles) at Corpus Cristi and some religious festivities throughout Ecuador (see our 2018 Corpus Cristi blog here).

Here are members of the tour group organized by IdiomArt.

Fireworks at MIPA Pyrotechnics in Gualaceo, Ecuador. The tour includes helping launch globos filled with hot air that floats to the sky, dancing cows and dogs, then snores, and finally exploding boxes of fireworks that MIPA Pyrotechnics makes.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Here’s a drone shot of this year’s Christmas tree in Cuenca.